We have forgotten the art of impeccability as a spiritual tool and we suffer mightily from it.

Without the practice of impeccability we never realize what it is to reach our full potential – the code for which we carry in our cellular DNA – we never know the full extent of the unique and creative selves we came to express.

Instead we settle for mediocre lives. We get by. We do what we have to do. And we wonder why we are so dissatisfied or disappointed with life.

Why not make this moment an act of impeccability? Whatever you are doing, give it your full attention. Set the intention to complete the task with precision and excellence, whether it’s chopping vegetables or cleaning the tub… Whether it’s speaking to a friend or caring for a relative. Go beyond what is expected – not to impress them (though it will! 😉) but FOR your own spiritual development!

Make it your habit to rise to your best no matter how great or small the task that is placed before you. Even if the task is an unpleasant one! Especially then!

Allow the practice of impeccability to be a tool for your refinement, shaping you, through its practice, into being the full realization of your own Highest and Best Self.

We stand gently firm, relentlessly kind, yet immovable in Truth … We do not quake or defend our right to stand where we do, and we do not insist that others must stand on our same bottom line – they must find their own. Their journey is not ours to save, destroy, nor shape. It is our own journey that we are here to take. We have chosen to be guided by spiritual principles, rather than by fate.
We are lovers of Truth who know we are on Earth, and on the personal Path we are on, to learn to align with and serve our Original Source. We have died to self-will and live only in the Will of Source – and we allow nothing to stand in the Way of this Life Purpose.

We trust Source implicitly – and do not detest nor resist the cause that brings us to Death. We do not need to turn into the Destroyer that attacks in our effort to overcome it. We stand instead upon the principles in which we believe. We do not waver.

We do not hasten nor do we grieve our return to Our Creator Source. We live fully alive to this moment, ready to die in the next, if our time is called. Our goal is to die with grace through surrender, rather than to stay “alive” at any cost. We walk therefore without fear.

Being eternal beings we do not fear transition and therefore do not need to protect ourselves from it at all; we are already protected by a Source that nothing, human or otherwise, can defeat.

Recently the life of a friend, and fellow wayfarer on the path to consciousness, was taken by an act of ruthless brutality. In our struggle to understand how such a bright light could be so suddenly snuffed out by one whose thinking is clearly distorted … and left with questions like, “how do we even begin to think of forgiving? Is it permissible even, much less possible, to forgive someone who ends a life, especially of someone we love? If not, then are we obligated to despise them forever, to build a wall of hatred between us, in some crazy effort to punish the perpetrator, or protect ourselves from him? And don’t we end up then, by insisting on wearing the armor of hate, become just as mad and distorted as we accuse them of being?

If I could speak to the perpetrator of my friend’s death, here is what I imagine I’d like to say:

Dear Perpetrator,

I speak to you, not as your judge, but as a fellow sufferer who knows a little about what it is to torment oneself with thoughts of rejection, isolation, jealousy, and revenge. Truly the only difference between you and me may be simply that I have a set of tools that allows me to step back from destructively reacting so that I can see what my thoughts are doing to me, rather than to blindly react out of them with unfortunate, even disasterous results.

Like you and every other human being on planet Earth, I, too, do what I do because I believe what I think. This is because the feelings that drive our behavior are generated by our thoughts – only always! So when we believe what we’re thinking, we feel and act as if what we think is true which means we automatically act in ways that bring us the very results we expect, and thus prove our unhappy story to be true.

Applying this idea to the way we perceive life changes everything – but the truth is that most of us don’t even know we have that choice! We think that because we think a particular thought, it must be true! And we go off “half-cocked” as the saying goes, creating lives of misery and suffering for ourselves, simply because we assume the crazy thoughts we think are right. We never even question them.

But when we come to understand that it is not not what happens outside us that causes our feelings, but the thoughts we think ABOUT those happenings, we can begin to move towards sanity and forgiveness, which is essential for inner peace.

Forgiveness, simply put, means to let go of the unhappy, crazy-making stories we are holding onto, so we can begin to heal our minds and return to Reality – which is life as it is without an unhappy story attached.

Of course, when we feel deep down inside that we have committed the unforgivable, and that there is no hope for us, we cannot forgive, i.e. “let go of” our unhappy story because we need it desperately to justify why we did what we did! Oh woe on us when we decide we cannot be forgiven! Such a decision dooms us to a life of acting in ways that can only further prove how hopelessly unforgivable we are, and thus rob us of the love and respect for which we so desperately yearn.

There is never a peaceful moment within us from that day forward … until, or unless, we can come to recognize that there is only one true reason we do what we do – EVER – and that’s because we believe what we think … and as long as we go on thinking the way we do, we are doomed to act out in unhappy, often destructive, ways.

The truth is that it’s never too late to take steps to extricate ourselves from the internal Hell we have created by believing our excruciatingly painful thoughts. Forgiveness is the only way we can begin to mend our minds and hearts that have become shattered by extremely painful thoughts. Self-forgiveness is the only thing that can return us to peace.

My hope and prayer is that you find the peace that forgiveness can bring. I hold that as a possibility for you. I believe that is what our friend, your beloved, whose life you took, would want us both to do … to forgive you. She would want that for you, and for the children who lost not only their mother, but you, their father, as well. This too must be forgiven by you, if they are to be able to forgive you, or themselves, for hating you, the father they love.

It’s a gutsy choice to make … the decision to give up blame (of oneself really, that blame that is then projected out onto the other in the form of accusation, simply to escape self-hatred), and to forgive. It takes a lot of courage to be more involved in looking for and owning our own part in the happenings of our life than we are to blame others for our pain. It starts with the realization that it is OUR thoughts, not what anyone else says or does, that determines our emotional state.

I do not know if this level of self-responsibility is something you are ready to do now – or ever. Reality always wins, that I do know – which means we will harvest the outcome tomorrow of the thoughts we believe today (The Law of Cause & Effect).

To get started on the path to forgiveness, we start with a simple question … ask it immediately upon the first sign of emotional distress … the question we must ask ourselves are: “Is this thought I am thinking Reality? Do I know that absolutely?”

My challenge is essentially the same as yours … I too must forgive … you? Yes, but I know that to do that I must start with owning that part of myself that, like you, can get so confused in my thinking that I act in ways I later deeply regret. That is the story you mirror to me … By questioning it, I am able to apply the Guiding Principles and return to Reality and sanity. My unhappy story begins to dissolve in the light of day.

In essence, we forgive others, because we need forgiveness too. We forgive because to do so sets us free and delivers us to peace. We do it because it’s the kindest, most healing thing to give ourselves and the world around us, because a soul at peace with Self is a peaceful soul.

All of us get caught up in our limited story on occasion, it’s not a problem … it’s just what human’s do! We are designed to be dysfunctional! (perhaps you’ve noticed! ;))

Humans simply believe the thoughts we think without questioning them at all. We simply, and naturally, think what we think is true. We mistake our thoughts about Reality for being Reality! They are NOT the same thing at all!

One way to tell the difference between Reality and our story about Reality is to ask ourselves if what we believe can be argued – Reality/truth is inarguable – so when we attempt to argue a point of view as being “right” we can know immediately that we are pushing our story about Reality, which might, or might not have anything to do with Reality at all.

But none of this is a problem.

Actually, I believe it’s not only not a problem to get hooked by our story, but that it is, indeed, a necessary part of the refinement process we must go through to mature as individuals. We have to get caught up (hooked) in our unhappy stories, for how else are we going to see the repercussions of what we believe, much less be able to forgive ourselves for who we become when we believe the fear and resentment-based stories we think except to play them out in visible fashion?

From playing out our stories about life, we come to understand that all humans do what we do because we believe what we think. Knowing that allows us to begin to stand back, rather than to automatically react in ways that only perpetuate the unhappy story we are believing.

Seeing times of stuckness and getting hooked as something necessary to our evolutions allows us to value highly the comeuppances and sticky places in our life circumstances, for they show us the obstacles that are currently standing between us and peace.

It is the situations and people we know that cause us to ruffle our feathers in distaste and dissent the most that are our biggest gift-bringers; they bring us the gift of freedom by helping us to recognize where we still hold ourselves hostage to unhappy beliefs and limited story. We may not like these people, OR the lessons they bring, but they are essential players in our spiritual, emotional, and mental maturation process, nonetheless.

This process of maturation, of growing-up, that we, as humans, are invited to engage in is one I have spent a great deal of time learning and sharing about. From that study and years of experimenting with the principles that underlie the work I do with others, has come the Reality Formula™, a method that is based on founding principles in the work of self- refinement that teaches, for instance that: When we believe what we think, we automatically feel and act as if our thoughts are true, and when we act as if what we think is true, we begin to act in ways that will invite others to give us the evidence we need to prove our thoughts true.

Good or bad, this simple principle applies. When we believe unhappy thoughts we create an unhappy personal world … that becomes our personal reality. When we believe happy thoughts, we create a much happier world of peace, love, and abundance. Sounds simple … and it is … but not necessarily easy – at all!

Sometimes the awakening to consciousness process is a really painful one. Sometimes we must be shown in loud noise, and chaos how it is we stand in the way of peace and Reality. Sometimes we must become broken, like shattered glass, so that Reality can be glimmered through the broken shards of the iron-clad mind-set of our totally made-up story about it.

We go through tough times often on our way to learning that it is not what we experience that dictates what we believe, but what we believe that determines what we see. This is true only every time! And once we get it … we can begin to cooperate with the process that is unfolding in us, rather than to fight it tooth and nail.

The Reality Formula™ is a consciousness refining process that is designed to inspire an evolving maturity where the observer or higher consciousness rules our choices, instead of the victim-ego that prefers to slide into an unconscious perception of ourselves as victims at the mercy of life. Instead we come to see that everything we encounter serves to enlighten us further.

The turn around happens when we stop seeing the world as being “against,” “at,” or “done to” us, and come to see the incredible way it mirrors for us the state of our relationship with ourselves.

Before you read further: This letter, though a personal one written to my grandson, may also be relevant to you, or your family. I share it here for two reasons, one, I post this letter here as a way to invite my grandson without applying any well-intentioned pressure on him to go along just because he thinks he should, Since he does not know the letter is here … he will have to find it … when (and if) he finds it, he can choose to respond or not. It leaves his response up to him. I trust that when he does find it, it will be the exact right time for him to read it. And if he doesn’t find it … well that’s the Universe working too. 😉 )

The other reason I post this letter here on my blog was due to my husband’s request. He suggested that this is a letter that grandparents everywhere might be able to take and make their own towards encouraging them to share their multi-facted wisdom with the little ones coming behind. And so it is that I offer it to you – and to my precious grandson should he be led to find us too. Blessings,

To my Grandson (age 11),

There is a letter writing itself through my mind and I wanted to “let it out” onto paper. It is a letter to you on the topic of apprenticeship. I asked if you might like to consider an “apprenticeship” with me, and you said “yeah, sure.” Now I want to tell you what that means, so you can consider whether it’s something you still want to do.

First let me tell you why I offered it to you…

I have been watching your talents emerge and I want to support you in developing as many of them as you are led to explore. I believe you are being prepared for your service here on Earth. (I believe, that like clay vessels that are shaped for a unique purpose, we too are constructed with the particular talents & skills we have to be useful in a uniquely distinct and particularly individual way. So I watch with interest as those close to me grow to see what they like, and what they choose to focus their energy on.

I’ve been noticing your natural interests, and seeing the possibilities you might choose as your own service to Life. I would like to pass on to you tools I have been given a long the way that can support your unfolding more fully into your life expression and what it is you offer to the world.

These tools can greatly amplify your progress in life. Through them you can learn how to consciously choose your thoughts so that they work FOR you. You can learn how to direct and focus your thought energy to align with the One Universal and Supreme Source of Energy, and receive it’s total support to realize in your life only good. God is the One Mind that everything you see or can imagine is happening within, and His power and support is available to anyone who calls upon Him.

As I watch you I see a budding array of possibilities emerging. (BTW, I encourage you to look up any words written here that you cannot define) I see a native ability and interest in understanding math, quantum physics, art, music … I see a love of language, and an incredible verbal ability. I notice your love of reading and learning through research.

Balancing all those budding possibilities, I see an agile, quick body as well, that is strong, flexible, and fast, and a real willingness to discipline the body and mind to work for you. I see a friendly, easy way with people, also that is truly a wonderful attribute for anyone who is to work closely with people. I see you as a young man who is grounded, who has the potential to tap into the Ever Present God Energy and act as a sort of a water fountain for that Source of Flow & Supply, and from which others can, through you, drink their fill.

I trust our journey in life, and so I believe that there can be no coincidence to my being chosen as your grandmother; your coming into this family is by Divine intention and purpose.

There was a time on our planet when the role of grandparents was to be teachers for the children. This made sense, of course, because they were the ones who had the greatest amount of life experience, and therefore the most wisdom to share. Grandparents were in the best position to interact patiently and diligently with the children, so that they (children) matured more rapidly, and were able to be contributing members of the tribe sooner that they might without the teachings from the elders. Plus, with the weight of teaching placed in the hands of the elders, the parents were free to do the essential work of providing for the family – I think perhaps this was intended to be the natural design of families and following it allows greater harmony and peace among the tribe.

Having said that, I do not want to push you into anything. I respect your inner guidance … and therefore your decision, whatever it is, about what I’ve written here. You DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS, remember. 🙂 I promise. It is up to you.

An apprenticeship, should you accept my invitation, is not to be taken lightly. The only way progress can happen is to follow through on assignments given, with appropriate responses provided. The way it works is that I watch your responses to let me know when you are ready to move on to what’s next. 🙂 There is no hurry. You cannot do it wrong. There is no pressure … I am not attached to your performance …

(By the way, this is a private thing between you and me … that doesn’t mean you must keep it a secret, or that you absolutely cannot speak about it to whoever you choose – it simply means that you consider why you would choose to share it with someone before you do … and that your REASON for sharing be one that furthers you and them.

The words we speak out loud transmit powerful energy (like casting a spell) and sometimes, when we talk about things loosely, we end up spewing & wasting that potent energy – especially if we are bragging or complaining! This causes us to lose out on being able to utilize the power of spoken work for something of a higher quality. (this is one reason why gossip is detrimental.)

You must not use what you learn from our work together to try to impress others; trying to be better than someone else by telling them how much you know, or by using what you know to control them for your own success, creates an energetic boomerang. We are the ones who end up suffering when we use the power of these teachings in ways that separate us from others or ourselves. Indeed it brings us much unhappiness towards ourselves, and our goals, when we use these Universal tools for our own gain. What I say here is simply Universal Law – otherwise known as Just the “Way It Is,” or Reality.

Of course, I know all about using my words inappropriately, I’ve experienced the resulting self-suffering first hand. I have experienced alienation from myself and God and learned a lot from all of it – never the less, I do not want to go through it again. I hope you do not have to go through it for yourself. 🙂 Perhaps this heads up will serve you as a “red alert” so that you can avoid that pitfall. 😉

Another thing … as an apprentice, I will not make excuses for you because of your age. You are not a child who cannot do, or does not know, better. Not to me. Of course, I will always consider your well-being and safety, as well as your lack of experience in some areas, and give you directions accordingly. I see you as being fully able and capable of hearing, understanding, and taking responsibility for yourself, and I expect that from you. It is a requirement for our work together. This means you agree to take what you learn seriously, that you agree to practice the ideas and principles shared, and do the exercises that I may pass onto you to refine your abilities for co-creating an incredible life for yourself that will be enjoyable, adventurous, and a life lived in harmony and at peace with The Creator Mind.

There will be plenty of FUN as you learn how to play with “intention” ( an idea you will learn a lot about) … what that means is that even when you are relaxed and laid back, watching a movie, or wrestling with your brother, etc you are aware and practicing conscious responses so that everything grows around you. You become the fertilizer for those around you. They soak up your energy and open their hearts and minds to you.

If the tools I describe here sound like something you want to learn, then reply to me by email and say a couple of convincing lines that prove your desire to continue. I will wait to hear from you before I say anything else to you about any of this. Your response will tell me that you found this letter, and that you are ready to proceed.

Again, it’s not a big deal if you read this and decide that it’s not for you after all. Our arrangement will not work without your willing cooperation. It HAS to be your choice which means something you WANT to do. Besides, I am not interested in trying to “make somebody learn something just because I’ve decided they should know it.” 🙂 So again, If, after reading this, you do not feel a strong desire to continue … then simply let me know that it does not call to you. Nothing else between us changes and you can always rethink it later.

On the other hand, should you WANT to go forward – here is your first assignment:

Reply to this letter by comment or email. Read the posts I write on Facebook and when you read a post that brings up a new thought, or reminds you of something, then make a short comment on the post. This will not only tell me that you are committed to the apprenticeship, but it will also tell me how ready you are to move to the next stage of learning. 🙂